Communication devices, such as cellular phones, pagers, standard phones, computers, laptops, and portable email retrieval devices generate a tone, display a message, or vibrate upon receipt of an incoming call or message. Examples of messages or calls that precipitate such tones or vibrations include live calls, voice messages, instant messages (IMs), emails, video calls, and the like. A communication device, such as a mobile telephone, has a ring function that informs the user of the communication device of incoming calls. The ring function includes various modes such as a vibration mode or a melody mode that outputs a ring tone. Other communication devices have a similar ring function that can be configured to either vibrate or play a melody upon receipt of an incoming message or call. Still other communication devices, such as a computer, laptop, portable email retrieval device, and the like may provide an audible tone upon receipt of a new email or text message, where indication of receipt of the message may correspond to receipt at either the communication device itself or at a communications server (e.g., a voicemail server, an email server, a chat server, or the like).
Conventional communication devices generate a single tone for incoming calls and received messages, regardless of any differences between the call and other calls or the message and other messages. Moreover, many cellular phones support direct downloading of melodies from a melody-providing server via the Internet.
With the proliferation of the variations in ring and alert tones it is not surprising that distinctive rings have become widely adopted by consumers and business telephony customers alike. With the advances in telephony technology, users can now download a plurality of tones, melodies, or other alert modes in the communication device's internal memory for playback during receipt of calls having a predetermined characteristic. Now, communication devices support features that customize the alert or tone based on the caller's identity. In such solutions, the caller ID information triggers a predetermined ring that has been selected by the user of the communication device for the particular caller. After the user selects a ring or alert for a potential caller, the selected ring is either network-actuated (i.e., the network sends the appropriate signal to the user's communication device), or the ring is actuated by software operating on the communication device itself.
On some communication devices, for example, the device interprets the caller ID information associated with an incoming call signal and selects the ring tone that was previously selected to identify that caller. A user may group calling party contacts and associate one or more ring-tones with each group or person in the device's memory.
Present solutions are limited in that they are predetermined for a potential caller. Most solutions do not provide for the customization of a ring-tone or other alert based on situational events. Instead, current solutions focus on the caller's identity as the only criteria for selecting a ring-tone.
As a minor extension of alert notification customization, some prior art systems display how many times a caller appears in its call history. Such an embodiment is limited in that the user is required to look at the display of the communication device to determine how many times a person is listed on their call history. Furthermore, such embodiments may not provide a true indication of the urgency of a call because a user that has called twice in the last two minutes will not appear any differently on the display as a caller that has called two times in the last five days, as long as both callers have two entries in the call history.
There are other exceptions, however. For example, in PCT Application No. WO 2006/026622 to SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P., the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, a system for establishing flexible customizable tones allows for the customization of a ring-tone based on caller ID information, caller priority, call-urgency (as determined by the caller), and call context. The particular application provides a user with more options for customizing ring-tones but is still limited. One limitation of this particular application is that it relies upon a query and response system, where the caller is required to answer a query regarding whether the call is urgent or not. What is needed is a way to customize ring and alert-notifications based on a number of parameters that do not require a caller's response to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) unit or the like.